Skills are an interesting one. I really like the TQ skill trees and the flexibility they incorporate. But, are more skills a good thing or a bad thing?

Take WoW for example. (OK, ok...sry to mention it but you can't deny it's success...and it's skill tree usage :-) Bliz have just drastically reduced the number of skills available prior to Cata hitting the shelves. Not sure why. Seems they are reverting back to pre TBC days. They must have done it for a reason though.

Having just picked up TQ again after a few years of WoW, my observation is that in TQ, you have the potential in the skills trees for "tank", "healer", "dps" but in playing the game, those roles are not really that defined. In TQ, it seems that damage is what it's about. The skills choices just dictates how you carry out the dps.

For example, I went Nature/Hunter to be the party healer with a bow. But, in all honesty, 95% of the time I wasn't really healing much. And until I pushed up my Hunter skills, I was doing pretty piss-poor damage.

I guess what I'm saying is, skills are great, if they are provided for the right reason or rather within the right character class dynamic. If, like TQ, the defined roles are not that well "defined" then the skills, in my view, should concentrate more on maybe making the class build distinctions along the lines of how you kill stuff.

Not sure if any of that ramble makes sense but hey...it's postponed my next bug fix at work for 5 minutes

Lmaoboat - I'm still planning to use the mastery bar. It will play an even stronger role in assigning core attributes to classes this time too. I also like the continuous element of decision making it provides in the conflict between unlocking new skills or increasing your immediate power by investing in the skills you already have.

DaftMule - Your rant reminds me of an important goal in designing the Grim Dawn skills, which is to improve the function and role of non-dps skills. Changing the potion system should go a long way to accomplishing this. I'm also making an effort to more evenly balance the threat level for melee and ranged classes. I want melee damage mitigation skills to be stronger while ranged classes should have to rely more on crowd control and avoidance. In TQ melee really took a beating while ranged classes needed almost no defense because enemies were generally so ineffective at pinning them down.

TQ isn't an MMO. Typically, ARPGs don't fill all the "subclasses" well like an MMO, or hell, even a MOBA game would. In TQ the only classes you had were ranged dps, melee dps, ranged caster, and petmaster.

Any other potential class falls into one of those categories.

I never found that any ARPG has any roles besides those. In D2, Necromancer either plays ranged caster or petmaster (with no pet control), Barb is melee DPS (can tank better than others early on, but it balances out seeing as one of the only strategies in D2 is to grab strength and equip the strongest armor). etc.

And medierra - a good cure for the potions is to make them simply regenerate HP instead of restore a huge %. That with longer cooldowns makes them less viable, and makes the player rely on other sources more. I've used this in my own mod and I personally find myself using healing spells more often, which I've included at least one healing mechanic in most masteries.

Lmaoboat - I'm still planning to use the mastery bar. It will play an even stronger role in assigning core attributes to classes this time too. I also like the continuous element of decision making it provides in the conflict between unlocking new skills or increasing your immediate power by investing in the skills you already have.

DaftMule - Your rant reminds me of an important goal in designing the Grim Dawn skills, which is to improve the function and role of non-dps skills. Changing the potion system should go a long way to accomplishing this. I'm also making an effort to more evenly balance the threat level for melee and ranged classes. I want melee damage mitigation skills to be stronger while ranged classes should have to rely more on crowd control and avoidance. In TQ melee really took a beating while ranged classes needed almost no defense because enemies were generally so ineffective at pinning them down.

Music to my ears! Sounds like you guys are really investing a lot into improving Grim Dawn's skill system.

I really like the talk regarding improving characters in a more significant way other than just DPS.

TQ isn't an MMO. Typically, ARPGs don't fill all the "subclasses" well like an MMO, or hell, even a MOBA game would. In TQ the only classes you had were ranged dps, melee dps, ranged caster, and petmaster.

Any other potential class falls into one of those categories.

I never found that any ARPG has any roles besides those. In D2, Necromancer either plays ranged caster or petmaster (with no pet control), Barb is melee DPS (can tank better than others early on, but it balances out seeing as one of the only strategies in D2 is to grab strength and equip the strongest armor). etc.

And medierra - a good cure for the potions is to make them simply regenerate HP instead of restore a huge %. That with longer cooldowns makes them less viable, and makes the player rely on other sources more. I've used this in my own mod and I personally find myself using healing spells more often, which I've included at least one healing mechanic in most masteries.

Oh agreed...ARPG's are not MMO's. That said, I think the TQ scenario where it's difficult to see why you wouldn't bung all your points into damage skills can definitely be improved upon...and it sounds like it will be so that's cool

And medierra - a good cure for the potions is to make them simply regenerate HP instead of restore a huge %. That with longer cooldowns makes them less viable, and makes the player rely on other sources more. I've used this in my own mod and I personally find myself using healing spells more often, which I've included at least one healing mechanic in most masteries.

Yes, this is similar to what I've done. I intend to give most classes an effective method of healing, especially melee. I almost never use health potions when I play now, which isn't to say I don't occasionally almost die or actually die but they're rare enough and have a long enough cooldown that you tend to want to hoard them. For some items the hoarding tendency is counter to fun, like with TQ scrolls, but I think it is the behavior we want with potions since they really shouldn't be a dependent part of the normal gameplay. Rather, they should act as a reserve for very difficult / near-death situations. The rapid health regen outside of combat fills the role of TQ health potions but works better since you can't activate it inside of combat and it takes a while to kick-in. Basically if you have to rely on that to heal during combat, you have to run around / away a considerable distance, which is counter-productive and feels lame. So instead it makes me want to have better damage mitigation and in-combat healing skills. Thus, the rapid regen servers the purpose of replenishing you while you run between encounters.

So far it all seems to be working fairly well together but you can see for yourself once we get to alpha.

Glad to hear the direction this is going. It sounds like medierra is taking the necessary steps to improve non combat skills without pigeon holing classes into predefined roles (tank, healer, blah, blah). I hated that mechanic in MMOs and it is the reason I have sworn them off for good.